This blog is written by a journalist based in Mumbai who writes about cities, the environment, developmental issues, the media, women and many other subjects.The title 'ulti khopdi' is a Hindi phrase referring to someone who likes to look at things from the other side.

Sunday, March 08, 2015

Talking about rape

The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, March 8, 2015

We are so easily outraged. We get angry if someone from
another country critically views what we know to be our terrible
reality. We know women in India are not safe. We know there are rapes of
women every day — young, old, Dalit, tribal, in cities and in villages.
Yet, if a ‘foreigner’ deigns to point this out, we get upset; we are
‘hurt’, says the Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh; we are outraged; we
think it is a ‘conspiracy to defame India’.

So the controversy surrounding Leslee Udwin’s documentary film India’s Daughter
— about the December 16, 2012 gang-rape and murder of a 23-year-old
woman in Delhi — goes round and round in circles. It generates heat and
sound but little sense and certainly no hope.

I have
not seen the film and so will not comment on its contents. The
controversy surrounding it has once again brought into focus the grim
reality of rape as well as how many Indian men view women. Personally, I
don’t think any film, made by an Indian or a foreigner can make things
look worse than they already are. Nor should there be a question of
banning such films. What are we afraid of? What we can question is the
perspective in such films. For instance, the decision of the filmmaker
to interview one of the convicts and the lawyers, knowing what they
would say, can be questioned.

These questions can be
asked once you see the film. Now that the government has successfully
got a restraint order from the court, this is not a possibility
(although the Internet defies all restraint orders, as we all know). In
fact, by releasing the content of her interviews with Mukesh Singh and
the lawyers, the filmmaker has ensured that her film will be sought
after, despite the restraining order. Perhaps that is what she wanted in
the first place, to stir a controversy to promote her film. Or, to give
her the benefit of the doubt, perhaps she did not anticipate the
government’s response. If not, then she was incredibly naïve.

But
the separate — and perhaps more pertinent — issue is whether we can go
on talking about December 16, as if time has stood still and nothing has
changed. The Delhi gang rape galvanised women and men in a way that has
not been seen in India for several decades. It might have seemed
momentary. The demonstrations and candlelight vigils did end eventually.
But the protests set in motion several important initiatives including
the Justice J.S. Verma Committee report, the changes in the law and the
growing consciousness and conversation about crimes against women.

We
see this in the increase in the reporting on the incidence of rape. We
notice this in the way some women are now fighting back. We acknowledge
this in the fact that no political party can now ignore addressing the
question of women’s safety (whether they mean what they say is another
issue). This is the legacy left behind after those weeks when women and
men came out on the streets and expressed their anguish. The clock on
such consciousness cannot be turned back easily.

We
also know that, as articulated beautifully by the activist Kavita
Krishnan, Indian women do not want to be seen as India’s daughters — or,
for that matter, as mothers, wives, aunts, nieces or grandmothers.
Women want equality as citizens. They do not need the legitimacy of a
link to a male, a family or ‘the nation’. They demand respect as human
beings. It is so easy to bracket women within this cosy frame of ‘the
family’ while leaving ‘the nation’ to be managed by men. Objecting to
the title of the film is not just a question of semantics; it is
objecting to the attitude that the phrase represents; something that is
ultimately at the root of the violence that women face.

So
a film, good or bad, should not bring us back to the subject of rape,
of sexual assault, of everyday violence that millions of Indian women
suffer every single day. Our concern should not be reduced to one
incident, however horrific it was, one set of parents, or even one city.
There are women in Manipur, in Kashmir, in Chhattisgarh who face the
violence of the state. There are Dalit women across India who face the
violence of the upper castes. There are women born into poverty who face
the violence of a heartless economy that excludes them.

We
must also recognise that there is a struggle to see an end to this
violence. Women and men are needed for it. All Indian men are not
rapists or criminals. Women know that. So even as women sometimes
despair at the dominant attitudes that prevail, we must not fall into
the trap of reducing our problems to these simplistic binaries — of
helpless women and villainous men, of daughters that should be protected
and of rapists who should be hanged. And the ‘hurt’ that the Home
Minister should feel is not over the contents of a film, but the daily
reality of violence that women in India continue to face.

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My profile

Journalist, columnist, writer based in Mumbai. Author of "Rediscovering Dharavi: Stories from Asia's largest slum" (Penguin, 2000). Worked with The Hindu, Times of India, Indian Express and Himmat Weekly.
Other books include "Whose News? The Media and Women's Issues" edited with Ammu Joseph (published by Sage 1994/2006), "Terror Counter-Terror: Women Speak Out" edited with Ammu Joesph (published by Kali for Women, 2003) and "Missing: Half the Story, Journalism as if Gender Matters" (published by Zubaan, 2010).
Regular columns in The Hindu, Sunday Magazine and on The Hoot (www.thehoot.org).